FREDERICKTOWN — Fredericktown’s Board of Education on Tuesday celebrated the successes the district has achieved so far this fall.
Superintendent Jim Peterson commended members of the band, football team, volleyball team and cross country team for outstanding accomplishments. He also commended the elementary school for being a national Blue Ribbon school, and lauded the district as a whole for achieving an excellent designation and for qualifying for “Race to the Top” funding.
Peterson told the News on Wednesday that he also proposed a series of “Community Conversations.
“The purpose of the conversation,” Peterson said, “is to obtain honest feedback from our community and from our parents as to how we can improve on our already excellent school district. We know there are ways that we can improve and we want to improve.”
Principals Emily Funston and Robert Moore have been asked to identify six to 12 parents who would be willing to serve as hosts for the meetings in their own home. The hosts would be in charge of inviting eight to 12 people. The district would provide coffee, Peterson said, and he as well as the appropriate principal and a school board member will be at the meeting. He said the meetings, tentatively planned for November, should last no longer than 90 minutes.
In giving her monthly report, Treasurer Pat Miller said the district should end the fiscal year in the black. She predicts revenues will exceed expenditures by $11,000. The district’s expenditures, Miller said, will outpace revenues beginning July 1, to the tune of $783,000. The federal stimulus money and education jobs money will go away, she said, and the State Department of Education has suggested districts plan for a 10 percent to 14 percent decrease in state funding.
“This year we got $232,000 for education jobs,” said Miller. “That’s why we are not deficit spending this year. That’s why we didn’t go back to the voters this November. When that goes away and the stimulus money goes away, that’s how we can get so quickly into deficit spending. Expenditures will exceed revenues.”
